From Monday, July 11, through Friday, July 15, Focus.com is presenting Focus B2B Marketing Week, rolling out a bunch of webinars and roundtable panels that will bring together the top experts in their fields to discuss the state of B2B marketing today.

Couple things to note:

Wednesday at 10 am PT is a webinar with Ardath Albee and me. Everything else is a roundtable.

Here we are again. If you missed Part I, make sure to read it first. Once again, before we begin, I need to introduce the members of the band:

On the guitar, Tom Scearce (@TLOTL), and on the electric keyboard, Chris Jablonski (@cjablonski).

I can say this, we had a lot of fun. Check out numbers 37-49. @TLOTL has some great ones.

25. Cold calling: I really have no idea why I put this on here. It’s pretty simple: You pick up the phone and call someone who has no idea you are calling. In today’s day and age, this is best left to professionals — a.k.a., outsourced.

26. Contacts: Just names. The contact movement has been brought upon us by breakthrough companies such as Jigsaw, demandbase and NetProspex. These are not leads, even if these companies market them as such. Contact purchasing is a critical component to push marketing (see below).

27. Leads: A lead is a person who has opted in for an offer (see below). As mentioned above, a contact is not a lead.

28. Offer: An offer can be defined as “something” someone has opted-in for. These can be discrete offers such as white papers, webinars and podcasts. They can also be an appointment with a sales person.

29. Lead generation: Activities designed to create leads.

30. Demand generation: All the activities designed to create demand. Not just lead generation, which is part of it. Everything — including things like PR, speaking engagements, advertising, discounts or special offers and so on and so on. BTW, this is an interesting point of conversation — check out some of the answers to this on Focus.com.

31. Lead nurturing: A process that uses content (offers, tools, white papers, etc.) and distribution tactics (email, phone, Web, etc.) to market to leads over time until they are measurably ready to engage. This one was hard. I got some terrific definitions from experts on Focus.com.

32. Remarkable content: You need to develop this every day, and you know it’s remarkable if people can apply it right away. You need to deliver on three characteristics: 1) value: create substantive, meaningful and high-quality content and 2) efficiency: package for simplicity and ease of consumption; 3) relevance: target buyers and address their specific challenges. (@cjablonski)

33. Push marketing: “Knocking on someone’s door.” In other words, using outbound marketing tactics such as email, phone and direct mail to market to contacts in order to create leads. Examples are outsourced appointment setting and email campaigns to a list.

34. Pull marketing: As opposed to push marketing, “getting people to walk into your store.” Pull means you are using SEO, paid search, etc. to attract people who are searching for something you offer. It also includes getting people to look at your products in other stores through online media and white paper syndication, for example. Because not all buyers are walking into your store, you need to make sure you are represented in other stores that attract your type of buyer.

35. Landing page: A Web page with a call-to-action to download an offer, such as a webinar, a white paper, and so on. In order to download the offer, the user has to fill out a form. (@cjablonski)

36. Direct mail: The act of sending a marketing offer via the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, and so on. This is a dying lead-generation tool. NOTE: there are marketers who believe direct mail still works despite the cost and low conversion rates. My suggestion is that, if you don’t do it now, don’t start.

37. Return on contribution: Anyone who takes the time and energy to create remarkable content needs to also invest time in managing return on contribution. This can mean several things: 1) crowd-sourcing the content to leverage the friends and followers of the contributors for added distribution; 2) syndicating your content through targeted media properties; 3) engaging in online conversations where your content can be delivered in a relevant context ; and 4) leveraging your content across multiple campaigns, including lead-nurturing programs. (@TLOTL)

38. Micro-marketed content: The opposite of mass-marketed content. An unmediated, free-flowing discussion among genuine experts in a niche category (e.g., this discussion on Focus.com) is often more relevant and helpful to buyers than a banner ad or an industry trade publication. (@TLOTL)

39. “Multi-channel, multi-touch”: The mantra of any successful pipeline/revenue generation program. Email, Web and phone are all integrated and response-measured (scored) using marketing automation services. (@TLOTL)

40. The “three legged stool”: In direct marketing, results are usually, ultimately, a function of the:

List (or audience)

Offer

Creative

Underperform in any one of these areas and the stool falls over. (@TLOTL)

41. The revenue/sausage factory: A useful metaphor for helping the uninitiated understand how the marketing and sales team work together to drive the top line. The factory can include “upstream” suppliers like Google, direct mail programs or demand-gen agencies. And it can also encompass post-sales “revenue recognition” functions like professional services and account management. (@TLOTL)

42. Pipeline erosion rate: Your sales team converts your leads into pipeline deals. They win some, they lose some. Some deals roll into next month/quarter. Some don’t. The erosion rate measures the lost pipeline value that must be replaced through incremental demand-gen efforts and budget. (@TLOTL)

43. Rotting lead rate: The percentage of leads that go untouched by sales (no email, call or voicemail) before they start to “rot.” Keep in mind that the goal is not necessarily a 0% “rot-rate.” In some cases, it’s totally ok for sales to let leads “rot.” If sales has warmer leads to work, marketing can take back the leads that would otherwise rot and nurture them until they are ready. (@TLOTL)

44. Funnel jockey: The demand-generation expert in every successful marketing department who understands his or her funnel well enough to hard-wire the entire revenue manufacturing process, from marketing spend, to lead gen, to pipeline creation and booked revenue. This person is one of the Excel users in the marketing department who is most likely to have a working command of functions like VLOOKUP, GETPIVOTDATA, SUMPRODUCT, and RAND. (@TLOTL)

45. Campaign Sorcerer: Describes a marketer who can quickly articulate and illustrate campaign concepts with a unique and integrated skill set that includes design aesthetics, copywriting/storyboarding, program logistics, and schedule visualization. A Powerpoint/Keynote Magic User proficient in spell-casting with SnagIt and Photoshop. (@TLOTL)

46. Market whisperer: The agency-side marketer who can, in 30 minutes or less, figure out the essence of a client’s marketing and sales challenges, with minimal to no briefing from said client, consulting only Twitter, Google, WordPress and Michael Porter’s Five Forces model. This marketer is more likely than his or her peers to get away with wearing ironic tee shirts or quirky, comment-worthy eyewear/accessories. (@TLOTL)

47. Tweeps: Twitter + Peeps = Tweeps. (@TLOTL)

48. Product myopia: Outdated marketing thinking still practiced by many who engage with prospects and clients through the lens of their own solutions. (@cjablonski)

49. Trapping the chicken in the courtyard: A semi-obscure “Rocky II” reference/metaphor describing the relentless and often frustrating pursuit of repeatable marketing and sales success. “I feel like a Kentucky Fried idiot.” — Rocky Balboa (@TLOTL)

50. Buyer engagement: Your goal anytime a buyer comes into contact with you. To get their full attention and immerse them into a brand experience, make sure everything you do is valuable and differentiated. (@cjablonski)

Below are SiriusDecisions definitions I have included because they have done an amazing job of getting marketers to use their methodology and lingo. This is for the other marketers who aren’t Sirius trained and want to talk the talk (I chose the three most used terms)

51. MQL (Marketing qualified lead): Prospects defined by your marketing and sales organization as someone ready to pass to sales. They’re instrumental in calculating lead gen metrics, such as marketing qualified lead rate (# of MQLs/# of total marketing contacts).

52. SAL (Sales accepted lead): A lead that has met the basic tenets of qualification and that sales has agreed to engage. (@cjablonski)

53. SQL (Sales qualified lead): A prospect confirmed by sales as a true revenue opportunity and entered into the pipeline. (@cjablonski)

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Drumroll, please … Another ambitious post here: The Marketing Hipster Dictionary. When we started, I just wanted to create a post with some definitions of terms used in this blog and in the marketing space in general. Then we started having fun with some “originals.”

Before I go on, I must introduce my band. (Side note: I love when the lead singer introduces the band at concerts. I don’t know what it is — but I get excited.) On the guitar: Tom Scearce (@TLOTL). Tom is a brilliant marketer who understands marketing from brand to process. Follow him on Twitter. And on the electric keyboard: Chris Jablonski (@cjablonski). Chris can do anything. Period. And he does do everything, but he is not a dilettante. He does them all really well.

Ok, so here is the deal, my guitarist Tom wanted me to break this into a series. I prefer the big bang, so we compromised: The dictionary is broken into two: Today is the first 24. We will release the next 26 on Thursday. If you want to have fun and send in some, we may add it so send it over.

1. Marketing hipster or hipster marketing: The new bleeding-edge marketer. One of the first terms I’ve made up for this blog post but that I like a lot. If you’re doing some of the activities I’ve described below, you are a marketing hipster.

2. Lead qualification: People (with headsets), automation (CRM and marketing automation – yes, marketing automation) and process dedicated to contacting leads and qualifying them before passing them to sales. If you actually generate leads, you should do this. (See every other post on the Funnelholic.com). People can build this process for you like @bridgegroupinc or Stu Silverman (SalesRamp), or you can outsource qualification (numerous folks, I can’t even mention). Look, this is “old school” stuff, but it works. I sell leads, and what we’ve seen from our data is that companies with lead-qualification (and lead-nurturing) processes convert better than anyone else and, ultimately, buy more leads.

3. Conversion rate: The rate at which a prospect advances in your marketing process. I included this because everyone assumes conversion rate means landing page conversion. That is not true. Conversion rates happen across the life of a lead: Traffic to registration conversion, registration to lead conversion, lead to opportunity conversion, opportunity to sale conversion. Conversions happen all day in your process (I hope). Track them and watch them.

4. Lead scoring: Seriously, make it simple: the process of determining which leads are better than others. Don’t make it bigger than that. Use data you have now to start – this isn’t hard, then use marketing automation to implement, optimize and refine. Scoring seems so daunting, but it really isn’t when you finally tear down what it really is. The humans in your “conversion chain” score all the time in their head: They call certain leads more than others because they know they will convert.

5. Conversion chain: I just made that up in the previous definition, so I figured I would make a definition. The conversion chain is your series of conversion points you track from the top (e.g., Google, white paper syndication) to close. That’s a cool term. If it catches on, you heard it here first.

6. Metrics: Numbers generated via reporting that tell you something about your current processes. Yes, it can be called reporting or just “numbers,” but remember you want to be a b2b marketing hipster, so use the word: metrics. Here’s a tip: Choose three metrics to look at every day. Look at the rest once a week.

7. Pay-per-lead lead generation or performance-based lead generation: This is how marketers roll today. If you haven’t jumped on the PPL bandwagon, you should. You can get performance lead generation from media companies (such as the one I work at, Tippit) where you provide some sort of content such as a white paper in exchange for registration information. The media company will determine the number of leads they will deliver and a price. You can control your CPL metrics and organize around particular quantity numbers. This is good for marketers. You can also do this with appointment-setting vendors such as Green Leads, a firm led by one of the most active mavens on the market @damphoux.

8. Targeted email/email blast: Email is not for spam anymore. As marketers have gotten more sophisticated, they have gotten much better at outbound email. We have seen a big jump in email blasts to our database. You can blast to a third-party database (check out Marketfish for an amazing new targeted email application).

9. Trade show: Ah, the trade show. Let’s define a tradeshow as a broad industry event (e.g., Interop for IT), with a variety of different talk tracks, trade show booths, etc. Trade shows aren’t dying, they are just never going to be the same again. In ancient times, there were lots of tradeshows with lots of people and lots of vendors. Those days are gone. The trade shows that work are:

a. Raging parties: CES
b. Real education value: Sirius Decisions in marketing is a perfect example. They really focus on the content instead of pretending to help buyers, but peddling their own goods.

10. Live seminars: These can fall victim to the same symptoms as trade shows. The time commitment to travel ratio is minimized and the focus (not trying to be something for everyone) is compelling.

11. Lunch and learns: These are the same as live seminars but are shorter and with less content. Lunch and learns are small local, lunch events typically put on by vendors. They get 10 people, so the ROI is debatable.

12. Maven: Two years ago, I admit I had to look this one up. Here is the best technical definition: “A maven is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. The word maven comes from the Hebrew, via Yiddish, and means one who understands, based on an accumulation of knowledge.” A number of factors have made the role of the maven uber-critical in your life:

a. The role of third-party/thought leadership content in effective marketing practice. In other words, take a look around and you will find the best marketers incorporating the work of thought leaders and mavens instead of product sheets and data sheets.
b. Social media: the maven has gone from obscurity (only writing books and speaking at seminars) to global popularity with social media (Twitter in particular) and blogging. When I am doing research in my field, I go to my favorite mavens such as @ardath421 or @brianjcarroll in marketing (there are more obviously, but I need to restrain myself)

13. Maven marketing: I just made this phrase up too, and I’m hoping it sticks. Today’s marketer does two things with mavens:

a. Courts and/or works with mavens to create helpful buyer materials that don’t necessarily ever mention their product – that’s right. Mavens get more downloads than you and are TRUSTED. Today’s buyer trusts two people: their peers and their mavens. Those two groups far outweigh the vendor.
b. Creates mavens from their organization. Here’s one for all those people with social media budgets. Start by creating an internal maven. Here’s an example from the marketing industry: Mike Volpe (@mvolpe), VP at Hubspot, has 15,872 people who follow his every move on Twitter. They read him, respect him and re-Tweet him. That’s hipster marketing.

14. Marketing automation: This is an emerging software category offered by a plethora of vendors intended to consolidate, systematize and improve your marketing efforts. For some it’s nothing more than an email tool on steroids; for others, it’s delivering on the promise. Check out @cjablonski for more.

15. Content marketing: An Internet-spawned phenomenon embraced by B2B marketers. It has unleashed a torrent of information intended to build vendor thought leadership by way of educating the customer until sold on the brand. See @cjablonski.

16. Social media marketing: The marketing trend du jour with vendor outposts proliferating across social networking sites as they join communities and conversations in the effort to build awareness, drive sales and get people to talk about them. See @cjablonski.

17. Sales 2.0: I grabbed a technical definition from InsideCRM.com: “Sales 2.0 brings together customer-focused methodologies and productivity-enhancing technologies that transform selling from an art to a science. Sales 2.0 relies on a repeatable, collaborative and customer-enabled process that runs through the sales and marketing organization, resulting in improved productivity, predictable ROI and superior performance.” What matters to you is that there are killer tools that make sales better. An example is Connect and Sell which is a new-age auto-dialer that guarantees sales connects. Why does that matter to a marketer?
a. It’s a great tool for your lead-qualification team.
b. The biggest lag on your conversion rates come from sales connecting with your leads. Offering them tools to be more effective is a win for you. Period.

18. Thought leadership: In a world full of information and “me-too” solutions, you need to differentiate and boost your signal-to-noise ratio through the delivery of expertise and original knowledge that your audience cares about. Tap your mavens for this. See @cjablonski.

19. White paper syndication: Your marketing assets reside on your Web site, but you can get a lot more mileage out of them if you make them available from relevant sites across the internet. Vendors like Tippit can get your content into the right hands to help spread your message and build the top of your funnel. See @cjablonski.

20. BANT (Budget Authority Need Timeframe): A qualification methodology, or information that must be gathered or agreed to before passing a lead to sales. BANT is an age-old tradition that is coming back in vogue (big-time). Note to self: BANT is not something you achieve in lead generation (don’t put timeframe on forms) but in lead qualification.

21. Personal branding: This concept is not new, and not unique to marketing. But every marketer needs to understand it and practice it. Interacting with the world through a well-defined “brand of you” gives you a unique perspective on how people engage those other brands that you are paid to promote. See @TLOTL.

22. Mass expertization: A rapidly growing population of people, typically with commercial or status-driven agendas, publishing original content drawn from their experience, for the consumption of peers and/or prospective business partners. See @TLOTL.

23. Webcast, Webinar or Web Seminar: A webcast is a presentation delivered over the Internet so that prospects can watch instead of read. Webcasts are typically an hour long and involve a PowerPoint presentation. Webcasts should not be confused with video. Yes, you can use video, but that is not your typical use-case for a webcast. Webcasts are great vehicles for education, lead nurturing, thought leadership and quantifiable lead generation.

24. Optimization: Overused marketer term but critical nonetheless. Every element of your demand-generation process has hidden pockets of opportunity to improve. Don’t think so? Hire a consultant or design thinker to review your content and your strategy and listen in disbelief. See @cjablonski.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Much of what you see below is attributed. Some, however, like the input from @scottalbro, were fed to me conversationally through stream of consciousness, so I didn’t attribute them. He is a great writer and would not be crazy about my translation.

So, without further ado, here they are. I hope you enjoy them.

Contribute to the conversation (@tlotl)

Create remarkable content (lots of it) (@tlotl)

Distribute remarkable content (@tlotl)

Evolve beyond managing CPL (@tlotl)

Bring data to Sales management (@tlotl)

Talk to in-market prospects (@tlotl)

Close the buyer loop (@tlotl)

Talk to people who have bought/customers (@tlotl)

Talk to people who chose a competitor (@tlotl)

Sit in on a sales call once a week

Sit in on a prospecting call

Create a lead scoring system

Implement a lead scoring system

BTW, if you are just starting on scoring, don’t get too extreme. Scoring means deciding which leads are better than others.

Don’t agree to restrictive BANT criteria without considering all the people you won’t have sales talk to (if you think about it, they probably do)

And if you are in a hyper-targeted market (e.g., are focused on managed service providers only), your unified lead definition should be only: the right person with interest. Anything more restrictive means one lead a month, and your organization in trouble

Meet with sales weekly/bi-weekly for anecdotal closed loop feedback

Make a decision based on metrics

Make lots of decisions based on metrics

Over-rule a metrics-driven decision with a decision made from the gut

Basically: Balance metrics with intuition

Oh, and track everything you can

Oh, and yes, the numbers will never be perfect, but they should be enough to help you make decisions

Follow the top marketing mavens on twitter

Read content from top marketing mavens on twitter

Ask a question you want answered on Focus.com (OK, you can ask it on LinkedIn, too)

Create a lead management plan that starts from the top (lead generation) to a passed lead (P.S., based on your unified lead definition)

Read your competitors marketing materials

Fill out a lead form on your competitors site and see how they qualify, convert and nurture you

Do a at least one webinar a month

Make the webinar focused on business pains and issues, NOT a demo for your product

Leverage experts and thought leaders in your industry to speak

P.S., have those same experts create white papers, blog posts, etc. for you

Think of webinars for ALL aspects: quantifiable lead generation, lead nurturing, education, thought leadership

Create a lead qualification organization (dedicated phone-based team focused on following up on leads)

Optimize your lead qualification organization

Read scripts, emails etc.

Send an email to your clients that doesn’t sell them anything but instead helps them do their job

Then send these helpful emails monthly

Then use the marketing automation system you bought to track efficiency

Don’t forget your current customers, or to put it another way, market and foster goodwill with your customers

Update your social media profiles for completeness and marketability even if you aren’t looking for a job (LinkedIn, Focus.com, Facebook)

Start a blog

Update your blog weekly minimum

Don’t write about yourself, your company, etc. on the blog, except once in awhile

Put marketing, lead generation blogs into your Google reader

Allot 22 minutes a day to reading industry-related content

Respect every single lead (@cjablonski)

“Systems design” your programs (@cjablonski)

Make calculated risks routinely (@cjablonski)

Delight the most loyal (@cjablonski)

Surprise your customers (@cjablonski)

Be your target audience (@cjablonski)

Rip and replace your strategies (@cjablonski)

Manage your brand symbols (@cjablonski)

Nurture as if you meant it (@cjablonski)

Cleanse your sales pipeline (@cjablonski)

Be authoritative

Track your metrics based on opportunities created and opportunities

Get everyone on CRM (seriously — Its 2010)

Get a sales 2.0 tool

Increasing connects increases conversion

Don’t complain about what sales is doing with your leads

Don’t complain about sales in general

Urgency. Just be urgent

Call your lead generation vendors and optimize the program with real data

Post your content on third-party Web sites to capture traffic not going to your Web site

Clearly define what your product is and the use case it solves for in buyer language on your Web site, in materials, etc. — how many Web sites do you go do and you can’t figure out what the f*** the vendor does?) (@mschmier)

Optimize your landing pages for conversion

Considering pulling fields OFF your landing pages to get more people to download

However, don’t think about immediate conversion, judge the show by important meetings had (could be with customers) and the “right” people. If you are looking at short-term conversion rates, you will cancel them all.

Test a new lead generation source whenever you can (or you’ll never know what works)

Not sure what to do about Facebook — if you can get business there, write me back for next year

Most B2B marketers don’t always realize that the initial follow up on your leads can make or break your conversion rate and ultimately your ROI. The B2B marketers that do realize this have adjusted – they either own lead qualification, work extensively with the sales-lead lead-qualification team or outsource to a tele-vendor who qualifies leads before they pass them to the sales-lead lead-qual group. Just generating leads or managing CPL, and so on means nothing if you aren’t optimizized for what happens after you generate the lead. FYI: the biggest and best marketing organizations have already solved this and continue to do so.

So, as a person who has been providing leads to organizations for 10 years, I can say I have heard them all. Not just from the person on the phone following up, but from the marketers who gather feedback from sales. This “feedback” is from the front line of leads. If this is the feedback you are getting, sometimes fixing the follow-up first makes all the difference. Remember, if Sirius Decisions is right, 80 percent of the leads that sales disqualifies end up buying within 24 months. So those leads that “suck” many not be that bad after all.

Before I go on, I do want to say one think I have learned: many times all “frontline” objections are solved by three things:

1. Being clear about what the goal is of the call. In most cases, its two-fold: Figure out whether you should keep talking (score) and, if so, get them to the next step in the sales process (demonstration, appointment, and so on). This is where follow-up fails: Lead-qual reps think their job is to sell the product (bad call), figure out if they have read the whitepaper (hilarious). Every objection can be answered by the question “Are you the person involved in …?” Seriously.

So, here they are the 6 common, but easy to overcome, yet honestly, completely annoying pieces of feedback you receive on leads*:

1. “They don’t remember downloading the whitepaper”: Yes, I know. Since the advent of online whitepaper syndication, it has been the new buyer objection. Suckers get derailed from this objection. Seriously, why do you care? YOU know they did, so leverage that knowledge to keep on fighting. How about, “no problem, are you in charge of…?”

2. “They won’t call me back”: That’s right, because buyers (even when buying) can’t wait to call back someone so they can be subjected to BANT qualifying questions. Don’t just leave “checking in and seeing if you have any questions” voicemails of the early 90s. The buyer’s job is to NOT call you back or email you back (even when they LIKE you). Winning organizations have the following:

Coordinated call/email campaigns designed to get people to connect.

Outbound dialing service like Connect and Sell www.connectandsell.com

An understanding that not everyone will answer their phones in 3 weeks, so nurture.

3. “They don’t know who we are”: Now this one CAN be solved to an extent with the lead sources that you are using, but again, is that the ultimate opening question? Who are you? Don’t mind if I do.

4. “They don’t have a project”: Sorry that they don’t have a project today, but seeing as this is the right person who is requesting information about your market, you may want to talk to them. Just to note, from our marketing programs at Tippit, we have one simple lead definition, “Right Person, Right Interest.” We will pay for that. We know over time, they will buy. Just get us started.

5. “They aren’t the decision maker”: I know, I know, you need to talk to the CEO or VP. Well, they aren’t going to download things on the Internet. I understand why we need to get to the C-suite at some point, but that’s not going to happen with industrial grade, lead-generation machinery. Particularly with companies that want to do LOTS of business. If you want to hit the C-suite, put together a VITO campaign leveraging execs, make sure you have experienced outbound callers on the project and be happy with a couple leads. But don’t expect your lead machine to punch out CEO’s.

6. “They have a project but…”: You can’t have it both ways from lead gen. The perfect project ready to buy in one month with no warts attached is just NOT going to happen. If you do get projects, be happy you did. These are still leads. Here are some of my favorites:

“They fit our employee parameters, but they only want a small amount of licenses”

“They are already down the road”

Note: This is primarily related to leads and inquiries, depending on what you call them (not BANT scored).

*This “feedback” means there is a problem with expectation setting, process, and so on and can always be made to go away.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Yes, the book and subsequent movie “Confessions of a Shopaholic” inspired the title, but I couldn’t resist.

So, without further ado, Confessions of a Funnelholic:

I hate to say this, but I see similarities between The Funnelholic and the “Shopaholic”: The young writer’s financial column becomes very popular not because of her tremendous financial acumen but because her writing is “accessible.” She avoids complicated, esoteric language and gives her readers insight into the complex world of finance. While I feel like I have sales and marketing acumen, I have tried to make The Funnelholic casual and readable, which I believe has been one of the keys to success for this blog.

I stole the “Thought Leadership Series” Idea: One of the biggest traffic drivers for me has been the Thought Leadership interviews. I didn’t come up with the idea. I stole it from Jon Miller at Marketo and his Modern Marketing blog. I have no apologies, and Jon’s not mad at me. If there is one rule the Internet has created for marketers, it’s “if it works, steal it.” When marketers are coming up with their campaigns, I always tell them that part of their strategy should be to take anything that works for their competitors. Is an Adwords campaign working for a competitor? Copy it, make some minor tweaks and go.

I write everything myself: Some people in my company don’t believe I write everything, but I do. This isn’t much of a confession. The confession is that I leverage Tippit’s editorial staff to help edit and provide writing ideas.

I work for Tippit: Tippit CEO Scott Albro and I are big believers in third-party thought leadership. When I decided to write the blog, we agreed that The Funnelholic would not be an adver-blog for Tippit. It has worked, but the only negative has been the fact that no one knows I work for Tippit. Well, I do. But there is a greater point here: Today’s buyers leverage the Web to educate themselves (given), but their preferences are for third-party, non-partial thought leaders to turn to, not datasheets. Buyers listen to trusted advisors not sleazy sales pitches. We made the right move.

I create titles first and work backwards: It sounds crazy, but it’s true for two reasons: First, I think like a demand gen guy, with a subject line, a.k.a conversion, first. Second, I have a notepad, write down ideas as I do lead gen all day and fill it with knowledge later.

I thought I’d put social media aside for a minute and move back into some real hard-core lead generation.

I was reminded today of one of the oldest tricks in the book for outbound calling: The “Out-of-office” reply. This is a very simple trick: When you know someone is out of the office, always call and email. What you get is the following:

Voice mail: “Hi, this is … . I am out of the office until … . For immediate assistance, please call John Doe at XXX-XXXX.” Boom, you have a new contact in that department. Yes, for higher level contacts you get the admin, but for functional contacts, you got yourself another person to call.

Email: If you check out the sample below, you can see that an out of office reply can be contact gold. Although that contact will never email you back when you return to the office, you get a reply. The result is:

You typically get a list of contacts and their contact information. These people always work directly with your contact and will be useful as you navigate the account.

You get a direct phone number and/or other contact information from their signature.

Simple, yet daring….

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Anneke Seley is our first interview in the series. Anneke Seley was the twelfth employee at Oracle and the designer of the company’s revolutionary inside-sales operation. She is currently the CEO and founder of Phone Works, a consultancy that helps large and small businesses build and restructure sales teams to achieve predictable, measurable, and sustainable sales growth. Her book, “Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology,” is available at online retailers. For more information, visit www.sales20book.com.

Everywhere you go in Silicon Valley, people know Phone Works. In my eyes they have evolved their messaging to the point that they are directly associated with the Sales 2.0 movement. I am excited to have them involved in the Funnel Thought Leadership Interview series.

1. What are the three trends you see emerging in 2009?

Proliferation of Sales 2.0 — the use of innovative sales practices enabled by technology that creates value for both the buyer and seller.

More focus on measurable, predictable selling and lowering cost of sales.

Strengthening of customer relationships and alignment with buyer preferences.

2. What are the biggest challenges for 2009?

Finding new customers with budget and resources this quarter.

Keeping sales teams motivated.

Getting creative and strategic when it’s necessary to do more with less.

3. What are three metrics that b2b marketers should care about and why?

The number of qualified leads they are adding to pipeline weekly/monthly/quarterly. Volume is important, but numbers alone won’t help sales make its numbers.

ROI on marketing investments (best sources of qualified leads) to drive future investments in the most effective programs and avoid spending money on ineffective programs

Conversion rates from qualified-lead stage to future stages such as opportunity and close. To align marketing goals with sales objectives, leads should be tracked all the way through the sales cycle. Compensating marketing for generating leads that turn into revenue strengthens this alignment.

4. What are the top oversights marketers are making regarding lead generation?

Not measuring quality or conversion from lead to close.

Not communicating with sales on what constitutes a “qualified lead” or “target prospect”

Under-investing/not understanding volumes of qualified leads needed in the pipeline for sales to make its numbers.

5. What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?

We design sales processes that clearly indicate the volume of qualified leads required for revenue objectives to be met.

We work with marketing to define target prospects, lead-rating criteria and lead-qualification processes and establish sales development functions to track demand-generation program effectiveness as well as effectiveness of marketing messages, positioning, pricing, lists and offers.

We recommend marketing automation tools that can accelerate the sales process and test the results of those tools with pilot programs.

6. What three Web 2.0 applications, cutting-edge technologies or lead-generation sources do marketers HAVE to consider to be successful?

If forced to pick only three, I would pick a well-designed, easy-to-use, expandable CRM as the foundation, a great contact list/data source that is well-maintained and accurate, and sales analytics tools to facilitate sales process measurement. But there are many other effective tools that help engage or qualify customers online, accelerate the process of connecting with them live, shorten the contracts cycle, and so on.

In order to pick the best technology for you, first establish a sales process to track and measure your sales steps consistently to understand where the selling cycle is stalling or sales challenges are occurring. Only then can you determine which tools can have the most impact for your company.

7. What do you hope for in b2b sales and marketing for the new year?

Close communication and collaboration — with each other as well as with customers and prospects.

Changing mindset to embrace Sales 2.0 and the science of predictable selling.

Staying positive, optimistic and creative!

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

The oldest link-building trick in the book is the “best of” list. But this is not merely a link-building exercise. Actually, I have been dying to write this for a while. Since I have started the blog, I have found places on the Web to gather ideas and have had a chance to really think about the people that have given me the foundation for my ideology.

Because it’s my list, I created my own “best of” rules for how I made my choices:

The bottom line is that my professional career has to have been affected by you to make the list. That’s it.

There are only 19 on this list, so consider this Part I. I can’t help but find people as I expand my professional horizon.

So here are the 2008 Top of the Funnel Award winners, in no particular order:

Michael Stelzner: I started reading his blog when I started mine. He’s really smart and interesting. Not surprisingly, he is a great writer and a clear-cut thought leader in what works or doesn’t work in the white paper business.

Howard Sewell: This dude is a total stud. I have known a lot of people who have worked with him and believe in his work. He is known in Silicon Valley to be a guy who can deliver. So get this, I PAID to take Howard and Michael’s class on whitepaper syndication. That’s right, PAID. That typifies the kind of respect I have for them. I wish his blog posts were longer however.

Stu Silverman: This guy gets WAY too much ink from me, but he was my boss, knows b2b lead generation as well as anyone, and always delivers. He’s a consultant who has built lead-development teams in the Valley for 30 years. Not a blogger, so, I have to refer you his one white paper. Spend an hour with him, and you walk out smarter.

Jon Miller: You just know this dude is smart. His blog posts are insightful and Marketo (his company) is on the verge of greatness. I know a guy who is smart when I see one. I read most blogs when I remember to or feel like it. I always read his blog, Modern b2b Marketing Blog.

Brian Carroll: I am a sell-out. There may not be a more famous guy in our business. And this is way too obvious choice. But, I like this guy and as an Internet guy myself, props to him for being the number 1 result on Goggle for “ b2b lead generation.” Anyway, I like his work, and he sits on top of the lead-gen world as our number 1 thought leader.

Aaron Ross: This one is interesting. So, I know Aaron. He built a very successful outbound lead-generation group at Salesforce.com. But you always have to be careful as to whether companies like Salesforce.com made the man or if the man helped make Salesforce.com. The most important thing is that he built the outbound group that went after mid-size and higher opportunities, so he didn’t get to sit back and ride the Salesforce.com wave. I like reading his stuff a lot and think the guy is really smart. Also Aaron has a new business, Pebblestorm.com, which is innovative and ahead of it’s time.

The guys from Sirius Decisions: I can’t choose one, I have liked everyone of them. I was introduced by my boy Matt Elders and was impressed. More and more marketing departments are using their lead-generation methodologies. That’s a good thing.

The inventor(s) of Eloqua: I know they are trying to play their guy Steve Gershik up on webinars and over the internet, but I just couldn’t put him on the list yet. No offense, he just didn’t fit into my rule-set. But Eloqua will prove to be a landmark breakthrough for marketing, and all the others jumping in to play in the marketing automation game will ultimately thank these guys for inventing the category.

MarketingSherpa: I love MarketingSherpa. Period. I read the reports all the time.

Laura Ramos at Forrester Research: I saw Laura speak once and liked her schtick. Her stuff is good, not as “feet on the street” as some of the others, but valuable nonetheless.

Anneke Seely and Sally Duby from Phone Works: I use their compensation reports in one of my posts and read them every year. Like Stu above, these gals run around the Valley building inside sales and lead-gen teams. They have a great reputation, and I love that they use the compensation reports to stay in our hearts and minds. In other words, smart.

Brian Provost: Total fix here. I work with Brian, but let’s be clear: if there is a guy who has the best win percentage in the competitive b2b Internet market, its Brian. He IS SEO, not a guy who reads it out of a book, from classes, or online posts.

Mike Damphousse: Mike does outbound appointment setting. He helped build up By Appointment Only and now has his own gig: Green Leads. You gotta love the brute force outbound guys, especially those willing to take all the risk and charge you per-appointment. Check out his blog.

Paul Dunay: Another referral from Matt Elders. Paul has a blog that I read, and when I spoke to him I was amazed at his sophistication. You want a guy who knows what DRIP/nurture marketing is? Talk to Paul or listen to his stuff.

Robert Rosenthal: I like guys who write their blogs with curse words and raw opinions. His blog approach is close to mine, written like he talks and fun.

LinkedIn Answers: This is obviously not a person. Maybe I could have listed their CEO, but since I think he should have sold the company last year when he had the chance, I’m not going to give him any props. I can however, sit back in awe of the greatness of Linkedin Answers. I use it, other smart people are on it, and the answers you get are awesome.

The b2b lead blog: I just started reading this blog. The posts are interesting and witty. Also, they are prolific, so I get new content from them ALL the time.

Tamara Gielen: She has a great email marketing blog, BeRelevant!. I particularly appreciate blogs that are easy to read and have practical advice. This is one of them.

Denny Head: Denny has just started a consulting business, but I saw what he can do when he was with Avaya. He built a lead-processing machine there that is bar-none one of the best I have seen. Now he is selling his secrets.

This was fun. As I mentioned, 19 is not a lot, so stay tuned for more.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

One of my favorite blogs, the Modern b2b Marketing blog, has posted an interview their editor Jon Miller did with me. It’s part of their thought leadership series (yes, I was excited to be called a thought leader). Anyway, it is a very thorough post with lots of good info on my thoughts on b2b lead generation.